What a night!

We made the decision to bring our daughter down to Super Bowl Live (Thank you Grandma!) on January 30th and had an interesting “mishap” before we even got there…
While sitting at a stoplight on Marquette and 10th, about 3 blocks from our parking ramp, we got rear-ended. Not bad, but enough to scrape up our bumper pretty good. Not how we envisioned starting the night. I got out of the car and the approached the guy who hit me. He was driving a very nice, early 2000’s, very dusty Impala. He obviously had taken very good care of his car over the years, so much so that he had replaced his driver’s window with a plastic sheet….I suppose this was to keep the original in that pristine “Mint condition” that window collectors covet so dearly.

As he got out of his car, his phone dropped on the road (I wonder why that was). His girl friend yelled “THANK GOD THERE’S NO DAMAGE, HUH?”. In my most pleasant, passive-mostly aggressive, Minnesota-nice, yelled back “Thank god you have insurance, right?!”. Remember-the young lad didn’t have a driver’s window. “Oh yea, I got State Farm”, he replied confidently. State Farm is great, I’ll take it!

Blocking traffic, I yelled for instructions to the traffic cop directly in-front of me; “pull over right here and call 911” she said. I told him to do the same, he agreed to do so. I pulled over, he did not. You read that correctly…away he went. Now, in my most Minnesotan “I’m done being nice and passive, now I’m aggressive” tone, yelled back at the traffic cop pointing at the car speeding away “THAT’S HIM!”. This is where this gets good; the Minneapolis Police Traffic cop told me these exact instructions: “Call 911 and chase him.” You also read that correctly. “Chase Him”.

So, I did. Jason Bourne-style, in my AWD 7-passenger Acadia. Dodging, ducking, dipping, diving, and dodging in and out of traffic, narrowly missing buses, pedestrians, armored vehicles, and helicopters (OK, most of these might have been there for other reasons-but still), all while on the phone with the super nice 911 lady explaining every turn the guy (whose brakes must not have worked-otherwise he probably would have stopped) and myself were making. My wife was an exceptional second set of eyes, keeping a visual on the car at all times and telling me cross streets as I burned up downtown. Finally, after I got a really good description of the car (Dark Blue Impala, early 2000s, License Plate XXX-XXX; if you see him, tell him ‘Hi’ from me). I let him go. Remember, I had my kiddo in the backseat.

Now, before everyone who gets nervous about everything nowadays says “YOU DID ALL THAT WITH YOUR DAUGHTER IN THE CAR??!” Relax. Everything was on green lights, and ‘basically’ within the speed limit. We were a couple cars back. She was on her kindle–had no idea what was happening.
Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story, right?

After I let him go. That’s right. I LET him go, he couldn’t shake me. I had All-Wheel Drive. He had a plastic sheet. We sat outside Target Field for the police officer to file the report (Thank you Officer Hernandez). He told me it wasn’t standard protocol to tell civilians to chase down a suspect, but he was glad that if anyone was going to–it was someone with my sheer driving talent. (I may have added that last part).

Anyways, we finally did make it to Super Bowl Live about an hour and a half later than expected and even though, we were rushed–had a great time! I would recommend taking in the sights and sounds of the Super Bowl!

ML